Need A Spark

Hello,

I don’t know anything about automotive things. I’m not mechanical at all. If my truck quits and it’s got fuel, I’m out of options. But from being around guys that do know something about engines I’ve heard it said that you need two things, you need fuel and you need spark. If you’ve got those two things you should get fire. And I think I’m the same way. We all have fuel because were alive, but all of us need spark. We need to be motivated to accomplish things. I don’t care if it’s mowing the lawn or climbing Mt. Everest. Nothing great was ever accomplished without motivation. So I’m constantly trying to stay positive and motivated. I don’t know about you but it’s easy for me to fall off the wagon. Day in and day out and it’s the same old thing and before long I’m dragging my feet and I’m just going through the motions. I’m complaining about this and that. I can promise you, your not going to climb Mt. Everest with that out look on life. So when I feel myself heading down that road, I try to turn it around.

Things in my life have went pretty well this year so when your rolling it’s pretty easy to stay positive. I thought I had been doing good with my attitude but I met a guy the other day that I want to be more like and I want to tell you about him.
I spent most of my time in the rodeo business, I see a lot of people. Pro Rodeo is like a huge machine that takes a lot of deferent kinds of people to make it run. There’s contestants, contract acts, contractors, sponsors. Officials, workers, and everyone in between, because of this you see people all the time in different cities that you know have something to do with the rodeo business but your not sure what they do and most of the time you just pass each other and smile and say hello but that’s about it.
Well there’s a guy that I’ve seen a hundred times and before last week in Caldwell, Idaho I didn’t have a clue who this guy was, I didn’t know his name or what his connection was with the rodeo business.
Honestly the only reason I did recognize the guy is because he rides a sagway around and I’ve only seen a couple of them before and they look fun. If you’ve never seen them before it’s a 2 wheel motorized deal that you stand on and it’s like a scoter except the wheels are side by side. When he walks you can see that something is wrong, I thought the guy had polio because when I was a kid there was a friend of my dads that had polio and this guy walks just like he did, but he’s only about 40 and that’s young to have been stricken with that awful disease. I didn’t know what was wrong but it didn’t matter anyway. He was doing his thing and I was doing mine. He didn’t know me and I didn’t know him and life goes on. So I was at the Caldwell rodeo and I needed to practice and there is a great guy named Ken Wood that lives in the Caldwell, Idaho area and he said that I was welcome to come there and practice, so away I went.
When I got there in the morning there this guy was, the guy that rides the segway, is there and he was roping. His name is John and man does he have a story. I roped with him three mornings in a row and the first day we didn’t pay much attention to each other. He was practicing and so was I and he was having trouble with his roping and I was struggling as well so we didn’t have much time to visit. The second day Ken Wood told me John’s story. He was a bareback rider with a sponsorship and was riding great. He had never qualified for the NFR but he was on his way and John went to a Rodeo in Hepner, OR. And made a good ride but after the whistle he tried to jump off and landed on the back of his neck and broke his back resulting in John being paralyzed form the chest down. That was 17 years ago and he now works for Dodge and that’s why I had seen him at all those rodeos. If he was paralyzed how can he walk and rope I ask? Ken Wood said the guy is like superman and you need to ask him, so I did. John said that when he came off the horse that day he said that he thought it had just knocked the wind out of him because it wasn’t that bad of a wreck. The horse was bucking over the top of him and so he thought he’d better get out of there ,when he tried to roll over he couldn’t move. He said that it felt like someone was picking him up by the feet and lifting him up off the ground. He thought at first the horse had killed him and he was experiencing death. He said now he thinks what he was feeling is all of the feeling leaving his body. For the first year he was in a wheel chair and the doctors told him that was it. His spinal cord wasn’t severed but was crushed and that was going to be it. They did a surgery on him to try to relieve some pressure on his spine and to try to get his hands to open, for two months they were clinched shut. After the surgery John said that if he stared and tried with all his might he could move his right big toe and one finger on one hand. He was told to go to therapy once a week and they would help him with what they could but start to except that you will be in that chair for the rest of your life. So he went to therapy everyday. After one year he had learned to crawl and could drag himself across the floor and John said that he could move and that was a beginning. They put braces on his legs and tied cones to his arms and he could stand and hold himself up and then he took a step, Monster walking but it beat crawling so he was happy, from all that, to today working for Dodge, roping and married with a new baby is unbelievable. The things this guy had to go through just to do the things you and I take for granted, brought tears to my eyes. What an inspirational individual and a testimonial to the human sprit. John went to a doctor for a check up a few years back and the doctor had John’s x-rays on the board when John walked in, The Doctor excused himself for a minute because he said I have the wrong x-rays because the man that has these x-rays can’t walk. John said no those are mine. The Doctor said how is this possible? John said you got to try hard, Doc.
After the third day of practice I needed to move Johns Truck up a little and he wasn’t around so I jumped in and when I started it up the CD player started playing the last song he had been listening to It was turned up loud and the song said
I’m through with standing in lines to clubs I’ll never get in
its like the bottom of the 9th and I’m never going to win
This life hasn’t turned out quite the way I wanted it to be
I wanna new tour bus full of old guitars and a star on Hollywood boulevard somewhere between Cher and James Dean is fine with me.
I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame I’ll even cut my hair and change my name
because we all wonna be a big Rock Star living in hill top houses driving 15 cars. Hey Hey
I wanna be a Rock Star, That song fits this guy to a tee and I loved it when I turned on his truck and that song came pouring out of his speakers. I don’t know if he will ever he a rock star but with this guys heart it wouldn’t surprise me.
I’m so thankful that a guy like that would take a little time out of his day for a guy like me, too remind me of what the human sprit is capable of and rekindle that spark in me that we all need to climb our Mt. Everest.

Until next month
Thanks for your time
Walt Woodard